An Invasion Heads North

The people who voted for Trump weren't motivated by the allure of tax cuts. They were motivated by a desire to, at long last, secure the southern border.

The organized mob now being allowed to march through Mexico is an all too vivid reminder that the wall has not yet been built. These marchers aren't refugees. No Jew fleeing Germany in 1938, for example, would have turned down passage to Mexico because he wasn't allowed in the United States. Genuine refugees are grateful to be allowed to stay in the first country that will have them that isn't trying to harm them.

Nor are these economic immigrants looking to assimilate into America. They are marching behind a Honduran flag and singing the Honduran anthem and claiming an entitlement to cross our border and stay here, regardless of our laws. Genuine economic immigrants are grateful to the country that allowed them to escape the poverty their own native land regarded as either ineradicable or deserved. If your ancestor had shown up at Ellis Island flying a foreign flag, singing a foreign anthem, and displaying contempt for American law, he'd have been put on the first boat back to whatever European backwater he came from. Indeed, many of those who meekly submitted to the demands of American officialdom at Ellis Island later willingly renounced their former allegiance to any foreign ruler to become citizens of the country that had earned their gratitude.

Instead, the organized group marching toward our border should be seen as invaders, albeit unarmed ones. Trump should place the military between the invaders and their intended destination, and use his authority as Commander in Chief to order the military to arrest and then deport them. Ideally, Trump would give the order in person. He then should demand that Congress finally pass legislation to build the Wall, preferably funded by taxing remittances going abroad.

The alternative is, in essence, to allow anyone who wants to come to America to enter on their terms, not ours. This, in turn, would risk the submergence of America, since literally billions of people would, under the right conditions, gladly exchange life in the chaos of the Third World for life in America. Now is not the time for Trump to go wobbly. Quite the contrary.